Would Whistler’s Mother have “qualified” to spend $75 to become a “member” of the “exclusive” Yahoo-Groupsish Golden Gate Mothers Group? Sadly no, as she was one of those “older mothers.” Check out the membership criteria, below.

What are the criteria for membership?
You must be a woman who lives in San Francisco and is expecting a child or has at least one child younger than 5 years old. Our organization is intended solely to support mothers and to explore the issues that arise in motherhood.

What does it cost and how is the money spent?
Both our initial and renewal fees are $75 for membership for one year. This covers the administrative and operating expenses of our group including various programs such as educational events, kids activities, social events, Just For Moms events, playgroups, newsletter and more. Any credit card charges made to GGMG will be listed on your statement as “BigTent”.

Can I pay by check?
Our primary method of collecting membership fees is through BigTent. Because our approval process and newsletter distribution relies heavily on BigTent, we are not able to process any membership fees through paper check. Alternatively, membership fees can be collected though the gift membership process. Information can be found at www.ggmg.org/giftmembership.html.

(Well, you read that and you think isn’t Cheryl Brinkman another one of those Gavin Newsom lackeys /appointees? And isn’t the board of the SFMTA part of the problem itself? And isn’t the residential parking permit system a stupid, NIMBYish idea as well? That’s what you might think.)

Anyway, let’s say you want a parking permit now, without jumping through hoops. You and your baby need the 411 on “going around the system” like right now, baby. Well here it is, right here.

What’s that? “Object not found.” Somebody must have took down the adviceful webpage. How wude!

Oh, wait a second, here’s something they had up a few days back:

Click to expand

Couldn’t locate all the techniques the mommies discussed, but enjoy a sampler:

“I was able to get one by first talking with our pediatrician about whether he’d be willing to sign an affidavit that our nannies would be providing “medical care”. Since our healthy 3 month old son wouldn’t be able to survive on his own without care, I think that the doctor justified it in his own mind and said that he’d be willing to sign it. (You have to get a permit for a specific car, so you can’t just have an extra permit.)”

“We just had our pediatrician sign the medical caregiver form and were able to get a parking permit for our nanny with no questions asked.”

“We went through this same exact problem when we lived in the city a year ago. So what I ended up doing was this, when we it came time to renew our parking permits, we did and it came in the mail and using Windex* or 409 ( I can’t remember which) we sprayed it on the permit and wiped away the black marker with our license plate number and wrote in our nannies. It worked out perfectly. I drove to work so I didn’t need a permit during the day. There was a period of 6 weeks that I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I got her a temporary permit ( you can get them for 6 or 8 weeks or something like that) I think it’s a visitors permit. You have to go into the parking office but it worked out fine. Obviously wiping the number off the permit isn’t on the up and up, but we didn’t feel we had any other choice.”

And oh! I have another one. Help your nanny by getting your doctor to sign off on a DMV handicapped placard application! (Doctors will do this for you because there’s no downside for them – you see, no physician has ever been disciplined in the slightest for improperly authorizing a DMV handicapped placard during the entire history of the state of California. That’s why getting a placard is a can of corn. Anyway, if I were a nanny, I’d appreciate a blue placard more than some stupid parking sticker that only works in certain areas…)

The moderation on this group is horrible. If you try to ask what exactly the 75.00 is used for, your account gets shut down and suspended.

So let’s see $75.00 x 4000 members, plus all the advertising revenue 80K, where does all that money go? That’s a half a million dollars people have paid to have the privildge to post questions about a babies but rash?

No thanks, there are many other mothers groups out there. Bernal Heights parents group, Mission moms, Glen park, all on Yahoo for free.”

*Hey, where’s the Windex, Honey? I don’t know, ask the nanny. What, where the Hell is she – is she circling the block again? That’s it, we’re moving to Marin…”